No. 17 recently turned 21 on Monday. Her birthday presents: food, clothes and a Friday match against the Wisconsin Badgers.

Sept. 29, 2004

Things are finally starting to settle back down after a long weekend of traveling, birthday festivities, and a couple of much needed days off. This past weekend was pretty tough, as we lost to Ohio State 1-0 on a penalty kick, and lost 3-1 to fifth-ranked Penn State after being up 1-0 at halftime.

Everyone battled hard all weekend in what I felt were some of the most physically challenging games we've played all season. That's Big Ten soccer for you. It's tough to give all you have and not have any points to show for it, but dwelling on games won't get us anywhere. Plus, we have plenty of conference games left and we are looking forward to our home game against Wisconsin this Friday. The Purdooligans provide quite the home field advantage.

Before I move on to non-playing related topics, I have to mention a few specific players. I would like to congratulate Becca Robison on her first, and very well-deserved, player of the game vote she received for the Penn State match. Lauren Mason came up with so many big saves, she got the honor for the Ohio State game. And to (Meghan) Dybvig, that was a sweet goal this weekend. With the way she's going, I think there is plenty more where that came from.

Alright ... on to the fun stuff!

1.) AIR TIME
Flying usually isn't a notable experience, but it always tends to be interesting with our team. We flew out of Columbus to Penn State on Saturday in a relatively small plane.

So we're all waiting to take off when a certain player, who shall remain nameless, notices that one of the guys directing our plane was pretty good looking. She writes her name and number on a piece of paper and holds it up to the window for him.

It's a good thing we were the only people on the plane, because we all went crazy when she did that. I'm pretty sure it made this guy's day. He responded appreciatively by winking and waving to her. It was all a joke, but it was still the gutsiest move I've ever seen a girl make.

One would assume that one plane story is plenty, but no. We got the chance to have a charter flight from Penn State back to Purdue. Now football and basketball teams always do this kind of thing, but it was the soccer team's first time ... and it was much appreciated.

We all felt pretty important in our huge leather seats and endless supply of snacks. Being the social team that we are, we quickly became good friends with all the whole crew: Rowena, K.C., and even the mechanic. We were pretty mature, cheering every time the flight attendants made any announcement and testing out all the buttons and gadgets that surrounded us.

It felt like Christmas (or for me, Chanukah). Hopefully, we'll get the chance to do this again sometime.

2.) MY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
First off, I need to thank everybody who made this my best birthday EVER. I'm pretty sure I already said what a good time I had, but I just had to put it in writing.

It started off with some high quality decorating of our apartment by Shannon (Bradbury) and (Sharon) Pagorek which included balloons, signs, posters, and streamers, all with inside jokes written on them.

On Tuesday, Sess, Crystal, Shannon, (Amber) Henkle, and Jayme-Lee (Biamonte) took me shopping at the Circle Center Mall in Indy and then we went to dinner at Champs. We all got some pretty good stuff, and can I just say for the record that knee-high boots are not constructed to fit over a soccer players calf muscles.

Thanks for everything to everybody, I appreciated every last surprise.

3.) SHOUT OUTS
My favorite part ... shout outs! Upon request, I am saying thank you to our manager Daniel, the most enthusiastic person I've ever met in my life. He stays after practice with Jay-Lee (Biamonte) and me and finishes our corner kicks. He's a born goal scorer. Could you ask your wife to make us more cookies too? They were great.

To my weekend roommate, Parissa Eyorokon. I could not be any more scared of bugs, and we were lucky enough to find a huge spider and cockroach in our hotel room. It was pretty comforting to hear her tell me that people probably swallow spiders in their sleep anyways. That was my most paranoid night of sleep ever.

It was nice to finally meet Jayme's buddy, Matt. He made the trip from Buffalo to Penn State for our game. Good thing it took two hours for our food to come out on Sunday so you got to stay and hang out a little longer.

Lastly, and most importantly, if you drive by the apartment, the girls hung up a nice "HONK FOR HEISMAN! GO ORTON!" sign on the balcony. Feel free to do so.

"Achievement is not when you complete what you wanted to do, but when you ýaccomplish what you dreamed of doing."